The defense says Jessica Groves murdered her son Dylan Groves, and that her husband Daniel Groves only helped hide the body. Will jurors believe both parents/co-defendants?
Daniel Groves testified in the case on Friday in a Scioto County, Ohio courtroom. He asserted that when infant son Dylan died, he didn’t know how and why it happened.
The defendant said he initially didn’t tell officials about what happened because he worried about getting blamed. Indeed, Jessica Groves threatened to blame him for Dylan’s death, according to his testimony.
The defendant asserted that he wasn’t aware of any injuries his wife may have caused by striking the baby.
“There was not even a red mark,” he told his attorney Christine Scott.
He said he didn’t suspect that his wife did it, but he didn’t contact authorities because of his involvement with Child Protective Services, and because his wife threatened to blame him.
Daniel Groves’s testimony was comparatively more muted and restrained than his wife’s. Jessica Groves took the stand before he did, and confessed to murder, but she balked at many of the prosecutor’s specific questions about how Dylan sustained his injuries, and maintained she didn’t remember how some of them happened.
“I’m done talking to you!” she yelled. Groves said, however, that only she, not her husband, ended Dylan’s life, but she insisted it was an accident.
Her defense attorney Robert Stratton described her behavior as murder in opening statements.
“She murdered Dylan Groves,” he said.
By all accounts, this was a fraught family dynamic. Indeed, Daniel Groves testified he found his wife intimidating.
Prosecutors said Jessica Groves gave birth to Dylan on January 10, 2019 (He would’ve turned one year old on Friday). Hospital staffers determined both mother and newborn had illegal drugs in their system. The child was briefly put in foster care, but was returned to his father. Authorities said, however, Dylan Groves died at the end of March. Deputies executed a search warrant on the parents’ home on June 10, 2019. Jessica Groves was quickly apprehended, but Daniel Groves was arrested after a six-hour standoff, authorities said. On June 12, the father led authorities to Dylan’s body, which was down in a well.
Both defendants testified that the child died March 28. Daniel Groves said that this happened a couple of hours after a caseworker left their home.
His testimony in some matters contradicted statements by other witnesses. This included whether a nurse saw him high, and whether he used his older son to cheat in a drug test after Dylan’s birth.
#GrovesTrial – Prosecutor: The nurse that said she saw you high, she was lying?
Daniel says she was mistaken. pic.twitter.com/IwV8mtulax— Law & Crime Network (@LawCrimeNetwork) January 10, 2020
#GrovesTrial – Prosecutor asks Daniel about having his son give him urine samples. He said he had done that previously but he never asked him after Dylan was born. He said his son was mistaken about dates when he testified yesterday. pic.twitter.com/4PG6S0LsI5
— Law & Crime Network (@LawCrimeNetwork) January 10, 2020
[Screengrab via Law&Crime Network]
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